Television viewers are no longer confined to their home television sets. With the advent of time and place shifting techniques, viewers can now view their favorite television programs and other media content at virtually any time and from virtually any place. Personal video recorders (PVRs) and other time shifting devices are becoming increasingly ubiquitous. Additionally, many television viewers now use placeshifting devices to stream their television programs to mobile phones, tablets, personal computers, personal digital assistants, game players and/or other devices other than traditional television sets. Modern television viewers now expect to watch television at times and in places that were not previously thought possible.
As television viewing becomes increasingly mobile, various challenges can be encountered. For example, many portable media players lack sufficient storage capacity to store all of the media content that a user may want to watch. Video content can quickly consume a large amount of storage, so most users have to choose a relatively small amount of video content to carry in their phone, tablet or other personal device at any particular time. The limited storage severely restricts the choice of content that is available when the user is away from home, and it also requires relatively frequent updates to maintain a fresh store of unwatched content.
Placeshifting or other media streaming over telephone or data networks can improve the availability of content, but streaming may be very difficult in some locations (e.g., in aircraft, vehicles or other remote locations where networks are unavailable, or in hotels or other busy areas where networks are too overloaded to provide adequate bandwidth for video streaming). Even when adequate networks are available, video streams can consume a relatively large amount of bandwidth, thereby limiting the quality of the received stream and/or potentially incurring substantial cost to transfer an entire program. Moreover, it is important to protect the intellectual property rights of content owners even as the content is being viewed in non-traditional places and times.
It is therefore desirable to create systems, devices and methods for providing a variety of streaming media content to portable devices in a convenient yet secure manner. These and other desirable features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background section.